This is so funny. I lived in New York for two months and I think I did a pretty excellent job avoiding these things - except maybe the first time I rode the subway. I definitely struggled sliding my card and I received so many death stares.

I don't even live there and I'd be pretty pissed off by most of this stuff! Not sure how it happens, but every time we vacation somewhere, we get mistaken for people who live there. I even had a nun at the Notre Dame cathedral arguing with me about which suburb of Paris I was from (turns out my French skills back then were pretty good). She didn't want to believe I was some idiot tourist from Ohio!

I guess that means we've managed to figure out how not to look like dumb Midwest tourists, which I hear is a difficult thing to do. ;-)

Most of them true for London too except here people also go nuts if you stand on the wrong side of the elevator (left) and if you walk slowly on busy footpaths, thus holding others up and worse still stopping suddenly on a busy footpath before looking behind you thus causing a start a pile-up, albeit unintentionally! Ah big cities! Love 'em! x

Lol! We're visiting my brother in NYC next month, so thanks for the tips. :) I will do my best not to look like a tourist.... but I have a feeling the big clunky camera & my tennis shoes are going to give it away in about .5 seconds......

Most of them true for London too except here people also go nuts if you stand on the wrong side of the elevator (left) and if you walk slowly on busy footpaths, thus holding others up and worse still stopping suddenly on a busy footpath before looking behind you thus causing a start a pile-up, albeit unintentionally! Ah big cities! Love 'em! x

When I lived in Germany the expression was Rechts Stehen, Links Gehen on the escalators. which meant if you are standing.. stay to the right so that people can walk on the left side of the escalator. I have been in big cities a lot of this applies to any situation where you are in a crowd of some sort. It's funny though. I wouldn't trade my rural to semisuburban environment for anything. I love sitting on my back steps and seeing not one single house.. just the peaceful pond with geese and the occasional blue heron! I love being back in the woods 2 miles from the nearest paved road. Sure.. you don't have a coffee shop to walk to or whatever.. but you can make coffee at home without some snoot giving you a hard time because you don't order it "properly". It helps that we are great cooks.. I can tell you from experience that the steamed lobster with drawn butter is just as good when you eat it at home..lol.

I guess it's just as foreign for a New Yorker to think how anyone could be happy living on a 65 or 4 acre property without things within walking distance. (though within reasonable drives..:)).. as it is to understand how someone would put up with living in such close confines with so many other people! Both types of living certainly have their plusses and minuses.. but for me.. I will take Oliver's farm over Ava's city.. (Green Acres reference there ha!).

Last week I found out that my husband thought we had started subscribing to the paper while I thought he had started a subscription. It turns out that they paper boy has been leaving the paper for the basement apartment on our steps. I felt so guilty that I left the couple downstairs a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, flowers and a note explaining what happened. They were very sweet about it but I felt so bad!

And once I even stopped the guy who was about to get into the cab that I'd been waiting for the last 15 mins. I literally tore his tiny hands off from the cab's door with my poisonous mouth. Dude, that cab was mine.

I think all of these things are true for every major city! Though the metrocard thing totally threw me. NO other city in the US has you swipe a transit card like a credit card! Weird. The first time I visited new york I actually watched people use the turnstiles before I ever got on the subway. I didn't want to announce my tourist status to the world. :)